OUR FIRST LAW OF FALLING MANGOES: A TINY GLIMPSE OF MY SELF

OUR FIRST LAW OF FALLING MANGOES: A TINY GLIMPSE OF MY SELF

I was having a cup of tea in the garden yesterday. Nice sunny morning. Just a few white clouds to accentuate the depth of the blueness of the sky. I pulled my chair under the shade of the apple tree. I looked up the tree and right at that moment an apple fell down on the grass below. I have seen apples fallen on the grass but I never saw the act of actual spontaneous falling  before.  Witnessing the exact moment when the apple was falling lifted my spirits and put me into a happy mood.

 I remembered a summer afternoon of my childhood. We spent our summer vacations in the village at our ancestral home. We were part of a big joint family with a number of cousins growing together. My uncle, the eldest brother of my father, was the head of the family. He lived permanently there and looked after the house and the fields. On an afternoon, he took   two of us children to our mango orchard. It had about 15 to 20 mango trees of different kinds and a few other trees.

 The fruits had started to ripen. Uncle warned us not to climb on the trees and not to throw stones on the fruits. 

 "How are we then going to get any mango?"

"You are only to collect the ripened mangoes that fell from the trees by themselves." 

My cousin and I sat there, in the middle of the orchard, rapidly darting our glances in all directions. We ran as soon as a fruit started its descent from the tree. I usually spotted it first but he ran faster. We both usually reached near the fallen fruit together and a small skirmish followed interrupting the sleep of our uncle.

After a few episodes of interrupted sleep, he made a law. We both were to sit together back to back and each had the half of the orchard under surveillance. Any mango falling in your part of orchard was yours. Any one going in other’s territory will get a slap.  This was our first law of the falling mangoes!  

It seemed the best solution for a while but soon we started our skirmishes at the disputed common border.  Uncle’s sleep again disrupted and this time we got a few slaps each irrespective of who was at fault.  It may have seemed unjust at that time but now and here, it brought up a smile to my lips.

The intriguing fact is that I felt happy on seeing the falling apple before I recalled this long forgotten mango rule.  It seems childhood memories do have a profound effect on our state of being. 

I can now appreciate much better the story “Oil” written by the Nobel laureate Yasunari Kawabatay. I read this just a week ago. The protagonist says, “To this day, I have been extremely sensitive to the smell of oil. I simply believed I hated the smell. But when I heard my aunt's explanation, I realized, for the first time, that my own grief was contained within the story.” 

The childhood memories do form a considerable part of our autobiographical memory, which greatly influences the character of our self. Childhood memory or any long-term memory develops huge holes but the brain makes a coherent narrative that we call Autobiographical memory.  Autobiographical memory is what we recollect and can relive of personally experienced past events rather than actually or exactly what happened.

 I am not sure that the incident in the mango orchard happened exactly the way I remember but this is how it came to me and that is how it will stay. I am glad to be acquainted with a bit of my Self.